Imade Nibokun: Depressed While Black

At her blog Depressed While Black, Imade Nibokun shares mental health stories through an African-American lens and advocates for the Black Lives Matter movement.

After a severe psychiatric crisis during graduate school, Imade Nibokun was forced to challenge her own assumptions about race and depression. Now she is working on a memoir and advocating for mental health issues within the Black Lives Matter movement.

You write about music for L.A. Weekly. How does covering club acts synch with your self-care?

My music journalism actually is an act of self-care—a much-needed break from the heaviness of my Depressed While Black work, which is often intimate and confessional. Still, I have to be wise about the workload. When I was an intern in 2013, I would go to a concert at 9 p.m., get home at 1 a.m., and turn in a concert review by 8 a.m. My exhaustion triggered a debilitating depressive episode.

What’s your go-to music when you’re feeling down or moving slow?

When I’m feeling down, I listen to music that validates my pain, but also gives me hope that I won’t succumb to it. Some examples: “Alright,” by Ledisi; “Stressed Out,” by A Tribe Called Quest; and “Better,” by Ashley DuBose. I also listen to worship music by artists like Jaye Thomas and Laura Hackett Park that affirms my faith.

What role does your faith play in maintaining wellness?

Faith is what helps me resist the lies of depression, that I’m worthless. Faith allows me to not give up on myself and to see a purpose in my excruciating pain. My faith is not flawless, however. There were many dark nights when I didn’t want to deal with God because I felt He let me down.

What else helps?

A therapist, a psychiatrist, and supportive friends. When I only have one or two of those things, my life gets significantly harder. Since I currently don’t have health insurance, I’ve tried to invest in other forms of self-care, such as using mental health workbooks or being open and honest with my friends, even if that means posting a Facebook status.

How important is it to find a counselor who “looks like you”— who shares your cultural background?

Some therapists who aren’t black get issues of race and identity instantly. Others can get hung up on things that don’t make sense to them and you’re tasked with explaining cultural norms. My long-term therapists have included a white woman and an Asian woman who were great. But nothing replaces talking to my therapist about my natural hair, or when my therapist brings up mental health stigmas in the black community so I don’t have to.

What about your natural hair?

When I was 9, my family moved to the North Carolina. I was bullied for being dark-skinned with natural hair. So many offensive terms were thrown at me. I tried so hard to conform to what was deemed popular or attractive that by the time I was in 8th grade, my hair was falling out because I was straightening my hair with harsh chemicals. The message that my life as a dark-skinned black woman doesn’t matter makes facing depression very hard. Having a lower sense of worth means not feeling that you are worthy of mental health treatment.

You’ve also said you thought of depression as “not something we do as black people.”

I suffered for so long thinking that being black means praying depression away and dealing with pain privately. I had to liberate myself from false notions in order to get the help I needed.

When you first told your mother you have depression, her response was to urge more prayer. How do you two discuss it now?

Seeing me in a mental hospital ward was a game changer. She could see it was beyond a “pray it away” problem and she became an important part of my recovery process. Now my mom pays for some of my therapy sessions, and she makes sure I get the meds I need when I feel really down.

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